Mobile operators face a growing need for high reliability mobility across cellular networks. The number of dropped calls or other abnormal discontinuations of radio service can be minimized by effective handover operations. Handover operations enable a user to maintain a call and/or data sessions when travelling in and out of the effective ranges of cells, enable interoperability in multi-RAT (Radio Access Technology) and multi-band cellular communication environment, and allow efficient sharing of network resources, avoiding interference, etc.
Problems of optimizing handover process in cellular networks have been recognized in the conventional art and various techniques have been developed to provide solutions. For example:
US Patent Application No. 2012/040662 discloses subject matter relating to an architecture that can redirect communications upon detection of a handover failure in a Long Term Evolution (LTE) network. In particular, the architecture can obtain information indicative of a handover failure that is available in a first portion of the LTE network that has no control over the communication path. Furthermore, the architecture can utilize the information to instruct a second portion of the LTE network, one that can control the communication path but conventionally has no access to the information, to reroute the communication path to avoid unresponsive or failing network entities.
US Patent Application No. 2012/315895 discloses a method for identifying a missing neighbor in a wireless network. The method includes receiving a report about two or more pilot signals measured by a mobile station; determining that one or more of the reported pilot signals is a missing neighbor not comprised in a current neighbor list of the mobile station; choosing one or more candidate sectors having a pilot signal with the same pilot identity as the missing neighbor; and selecting a most likely sector as the missing neighbor from the one or more candidate sectors, based on calculated distances between the mobile station and a source sector, between the mobile station and at least one of the one or more candidate sectors, and between the source sector and at least one of the one or more candidate sectors, so as to identify the missing neighbor in the wireless network.
US Patent Application No. 2015/208297 discloses a technique of dynamically modifying neighbor lists for cells within telecommunications networks and/or modifying neighbor lists based on determined radio frequency coupling between cells. In some embodiments, the technique includes accessing a neighbor list associated with a target cell or associated with one or more neighbor cells of the target cell within a network, applying one or more dynamic optimization rule sets to the target cell, and modifying a neighbor list associated with the target cell or with neighbor cells to the target cell based on the applied rule sets.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,649,791 discloses developing a list of neighbor cells for a base station of a LTE mobile communication network based on distance information of neighboring cells; processing location data identifying location of the base station for which the list of neighbor cells is to be developed and locations of other base stations and determining distance between the base station and each respective one of the other base stations; ordering identification data of the other base stations based on at least in part determined distances; and compiling the list of neighbor cells for the base station to include the ordered identification data for a selected number of nearest ones of the other base stations, based on, at least in part, the determined distances.
The article “Evaluations of LTE Automatic Neighbor Relations”, Anders Dahlén et al., 1st IEEE Workshop on Autonomic Wireless Access, 2011 discloses methods for automatic configuration of neighbor cell relations and evaluates Automatic Neighbor Relations (ANR) in a pre-launch, commercially deployed network cluster.
The references above teach many principles of the handover process and optimizing thereof that are applicable to the presently disclosed subject matter. Therefore the full contents of these publications are incorporated by reference herein for teachings, where appropriate, of additional or alternative details, features and/or technical background.